Tom Konyves

Born in Budapest, based in Montreal until 1983, Tom Konyves is one of the original seven poets dubbed The Vehicule Poets. He has published 7 books of poetry, most recently "Perfect Answers to Silent Questions", by Ekstasis Editions, Victoria, BC. In 2007, he published a surrealist novella, OOSOOM (Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind) with BookThug, Toronto. In 1978, he coined the term 'videopoetry' to describe his multimedia work, and is considered to be one of the original pioneers of the form. He is the author of "Videopoetry: A Manifesto", published on Sept. 6, 2011. As one of the leading theorists of the genre of videopoetry – his Manifesto was reposted on numerous blogs, including W.J.T. Mitchell's Critical Inquiry, and to date has been accessed on issuu.com by more than 30,300 readers in 67 countries – he has been invited to address festivals, conferences and symposia in Vancouver, Seattle, Buenos Aires, Berlin, New York, London, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Montpellier, among others. Konyves has initiated many public poetry projects, including Poésie En Mouvement/Poetry On The Buses (Montreal, 1979). He curated the screenings of videopoems at The Text Festival (Bury, England, 2010) and at the Montpellier Poetry/Translation/Film Conference (2015) and has given numerous poetry performances. Since 2006, he has developed and taught courses at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, British Columbia. He retired from the University in 2019. The International Poetry Festival of Thuringia, Germany and the Bienale de Poesia International in Oeiras, Portugal, held a Retrospective exhibition of his videopoems in 2020 and 2021 respectively. In 2022, he curated the exhibition “Poets with a Video Camera: Videopoetry 1980-2020” and the Symposium "New Art Emerging: Two or Three Things You Should Know about Videopoetry" for the Surrey Art Gallery in Surrey, BC, Canada.